Both Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Sen felt that the Spaniards should be the first to spot the decoy fleet that Zheng Zhilong was carrying. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoBecause Zheng Zhilong's fleet, connected to the merchant ships, there are more than 100 of them, and the scale of this fleet is larger, so it is naturally easier to find. Moreover, Zheng Zhilong's fleet was in front, while Zheng Sen's fleet was following behind.

In addition to this, Zheng Zhilong's fleet is all in traditional livery, but Zheng Sen's fleet is made of dark gray canvas with low visibility. However, many things on the sea are not as people think. The first thing to encounter with the Spaniards was Zheng Sen's fleet.

This is actually not surprising, because the time of their encounter was in the morning of this day, these days are cloudy, there is neither moonlight nor starlight at night, it is completely impossible to see the five fingers, plus the sea at night is more or less sea fog, the visibility is not very good, Zheng Sen's warships can barely rely on the two lights on the mast to keep the entire formation unlost, it is already good, naturally it is impossible to find the Spanish fleet at a long distance. In fact, the same was true of the Spanish fleet, so at night, none of them found anyone. But when the first glimmer of morning glow illuminates the sea, everyone is surprised to find that the enemy is so close!

Yes, it's completely close at hand. Even the ships of the two fleets simply formed a formation together! This is because in the sea fog at night, everyone can only try to find the two lights in front, and the ships on both sides are similar in style, and the way of hanging the lights is exactly the same, but in the dark night and sea fog, the ships of the two fleets regard each other as their own friendly ships, and they don't notice that such a thing happened at all.

So when the sun came out, the two fleets were in disarray, all kinds of bells and trumpets sounded in a chaotic manner, some ships were anxious to distance themselves from the enemy, some were anxious to pounce on them to play broadside battles, and some were busy preparing to launch artillery bombardments on the enemy.

Zheng Sen's ship "Endeavour" was surrounded by Spanish warships in front and behind, but now everyone was not prepared, so no one had time to attack.

"Ring the bell! The Marines are ready to fight! Old Jack shouted, "Major General, please go to a safer place at once!" ”

"No, Captain Jack, I'm the fleet commander this time." Zheng Sen said. In order to avoid being locked up again during the battle, Zheng Sen did not let Old Jack be the commander of the fleet this time, but took the position of course, and Old Jack became the deputy commander and military adviser.

"The bow and stern guns are ready for grapegre fire at once! Raise the sails! Detach to the right! The Flag Bearer is ready to give instructions to the other ships! Old Jack didn't care about arguing with Zheng Sen at this time, but hurriedly issued a series of instructions.

Now that the two sides are so close, Old Jack's greatest fear is that his opponent will seize this opportunity to attack the main mast of the Endeavour with artillery, although the mast of the Endeavour is much tougher than that of most ships, and it is made of whole trees. But at such a distance, if you are hit, you may not be able to withstand it.

The two Spanish ships were doing something similar, and the distance between the two sides was now less than a hundred meters. Now the question is who can fire at the opponent first.

"Don't turn right, go straight ahead!" Zheng Sen commanded in a loud voice, "The marines go to the bow of the ship and prepare for a salvo!" ”

The herald listened, paused for a moment, and then passed on Zheng Sen's order.

"Captain Jack, we'll be able to fire first." Zheng Sen turned back to Old Jack and explained.

"You're right, you're the commander, and you have the right to decide." Old Jack replied.

As estimated by Zheng Sen, the firing speed of the Zheng family's fleet using silk medicine packs was significantly better than that of its opponent. In the bow of the "Endeavour", there is a 24-pounder gun (in fact, Zheng Sen would like to install a bigger cannon here, but now he can't cast a bigger cannon), Zheng Sen believes that the grapeshot fired by this cannon from the direction of the opponent's stern will definitely be able to dumb the opponent's stern gun at once, and then before the Spanish ship behind rushes over, the 24-pounder gun has time to use a solid cannonball to shoot through the fragile tail of the warship. Then he jumped around the gun deck of the enemy ship and hit it all the way to the bow of the ship. Such a single cannon may be able to kill dozens of people and destroy several cannons.

The "Endeavour" kept approaching the Spanish warship in front, and the Spaniards were also busy reloading the stern guns. However, the Spaniards, who did not use the silk medicine kits, were obviously much slower, and when the bow guns of the "Endeavour" were ready to fire, Zheng Sen saw through the binoculars that the opponent had just loaded the gunpowder and had not had time to load the shells.

"Boom!" The 24-pounder gun in the bow of the Endeavour opened fire, firing countless small iron beads the size of grapes at the Spanish stern guns on the opposite side. The small iron beads were sprinkled like a torrential rain, and several Spanish gunners who were loading were beaten to meat sauce on the spot.

Almost at the same time, the stern guns of the "Endeavour" were also fired, the same grapeshit, but because the firing distance was longer, the iron balls used were also slightly larger. This shot also preempted the opponent, knocking over several of the opponent's gunners next to the cannon.

"Well done!" Zheng Sen shouted, "Let the bow gun be replaced with a solid shell, and shoot at the opponent's gun deck; The stern gun changes the chain shell and hits the opponent's foremast! ”

The courage of the Spaniards was not dampened by this cannon, and although several gunners were defeated, several more came running, ready to continue reloading the guns and launch a counterattack.

However, by this time, the distance between the "Endeavour" and the Spanish warship in front of it was already closer, and the flintlock pistols in the hands of the marines were already effective against targets at this distance, so these gunners were knocked to the ground by the musket salvo of the marines. However, the warship that followed the "Endeavour" was further away, and the muskets in the hands of the marines were no longer paying attention to suppressing these gunners, so they were able to continue to reload their guns. However, the previous shelling still made their reload time much longer.

Old Jack has always had a saying about the Zheng family's fleet, that is: the sailors of the Zheng family are not as good as the Taixi navy, but the level of the Zheng family's gunners exceeds that of most of the Taixi gunners. This is, of course, filled with silver and whale meat in normal high-intensity training. And the gun crew on the "Endeavour" was even more selected. Therefore, before the Spaniards finished loading, the bow gun of the "Endeavour" had already completed reloading and fired a shot at the target in front.

This cannonball accurately hit the stern of the Spanish battleship in front, and plunged into the second gun deck from this weak position, although it was impossible to see what the result of this cannon was, but Zheng Sen also guessed that a 24-pound large iron ball, jumping all the way through the closed gun deck, how much damage it could bring if it was bounced on the deck and the ship's gang, it was only necessary to think about it......

Loading chain shells is a bit more complicated than loading solid shells, so after the bow gun has finished firing, the stern gun is not ready. However, the bow guns of the Spanish ship in the back were not ready. In the end, it was the tail gun of the "Endeavour" that fired first.

The chain shell was fired directly at the Spanish battleship behind, and the shell first cut several ropes between the foremast and the bow mast, which were slammed like whips after breaking, and a Spanish gunner was picking up a bundle of grapeshotfire to stuff it into the barrel, and a rope was drawn from behind, and the gunner was knocked unconscious with a snap, and the grapeshot fell from his hand and rolled all over the ground.

However, this was not the most fatal blow, the most fatal blow was that the chain bullet accurately hit the opponent's foremast, and broke it into two, the broken foremast fell and fell into the sea, and there was a large number of cables tied to the ship, and the Spanish ship was immediately pulled to one side by the fallen foremast, and off course - the guns on the out-of-control ship were no longer a threat to the Endeavour for the time being.

After the ship gave way, Zheng Sen saw the cruiser "Fubo" following the Spanish ship.

"Give an order to the 'Fubo' to turn right at once, get out of the melee, and direct the other ships to get out of the melee until the ship takes back command." Zheng Sen commanded.

The "Fubo" is the second ship in the fleet, and in the last naval battle, when the "Endeavour" went to deal with the two cruisers alone, the "Fubo" was responsible for the command of the other ships. Now that the danger behind it has been temporarily lifted, Zheng Sen feels that the "Endeavour" must of course seize the opportunity to bite the tail of the Spanish cruiser in front of it to shoot more shells into its gun deck and cause more damage to it.

The flag whisperer immediately used the flag to convey the order to the "Fubo", and the "Fubo" began to turn right, and at the same time issued an order to the other ships to get out of the melee.

At this time, the bow gun of the "Endeavour" fired again, because the distance between the two sides was closer, and this shell once again accurately hit the enemy ship.

What has been shelled by the "Endeavour" is Nielsen's current flagship "Glutton". Now the tail gun of the Gluttony is completely suppressed by the fire on the "Endeavour", although Nelson tried hard to get the soldiers on the ship to regain control of the tail gun and launch a counterattack, but the Spanish soldiers using arquebuses could not beat the marines using flintlock pistols on the "Endeavour" at close range, not to mention that the Chinese's cannon hit quickly and accurately, and every time the Spaniards had a little possibility of regaining control of the tail gun and launching a counterattack, this cannon would use grapeshot to teach the Spanish soldiers to be people again. Therefore, after dozens of Spaniards died, no one dared to move the stern cannon anymore, and could only watch the "Endeavour" fire at its stern after cannon. Fortunately, at this time, some Chinese ships that were originally in the melee began to withdraw, which allowed some other warships to free up their hands and rush over to support.